by Ellery Queen
A car was coming along the road already, though. A sedan with some early driver at the wheel. It slowed its bumping progress as it approached the break in the fence. It came to a momentary halt. The driver had seen his truck and him in the meadow, John Bantreagh thought, standing motionless. Maybe he could see the white of her dress in front of his wheels, though the truck might hide that from the road.
The car turned and came in, anyway. It drove slowly along the broad, deep, cleated tracks of his truck, approaching. That it should take the same course was perhaps inevitable, or at least expectable. Every field, however smooth, has its own hidden soft spots, waves, and hummocks, and one car will tend to follow the same path across it as another, unless deliberately held to a different course. Particularly when a previous car has already made ruts at the grass roots.
The driver of the approaching sedan probably didn’t realize that he was flattening out those cleated and distinctive treads beneath the impress of whatever nondescript tire treads he might have himself. Perhaps he didn’t notice them. Or if he did, he considered their preservation of no importance.
It wasn’t important, of course, thought John Bantreagh. His truck was here, he was here. He rested the palm of his left hand on the mudguard. His eyes burned red and sleepless. His throat was dry. His right hand hung down at his side with something in it. His truck crank, he realized. He didn’t know how long he had had it in his hand. He had been quite unaware of it. He hadn’t the strength now to place it back on the truck floor where he usually kept it. Not even to open his hand and let it drop into the grass.
The driver of the sedan stopped with his bumper nudging the back of the truck. He opened the door and got out. He was a big young fellow with a bronzed, square-jawed face and alert and steady gray eyes. He wore a black tropical suit, unbuttoned on an expanse of soft white shirt, black-necktied, and a black slouch hat. He overtopped John Bantreagh by four inches. His lithe, light-stepping frame had the massed weight of 200 pounds. He was a dozen years younger than John Bantreagh—perhaps he was 25. He looked fresh and well slept and newly bathed, competent and cool.
He pushed back his hat on his crisp black curls. He wore a nickeled badge, pinned to a red suspender strap over his white shirt. There was a polished walnut gun butt extruding from a black holster on his right hip, and a pair of handcuffs hanging beside it from his belt.
He gave a brief, alert glance at John Bantreagh’s stained, red-eyed face and thin, shaking form. He stood looking down at the woman’s body lying supine in front of the truck wheels, with his fists planted on his hips and his pectoral muscles expanded.
“What happened?” he said, “Run over?”
John Bantreagh swallowed. “Yes.”
“It looks pretty much like it was deliberate,” the big young fellow said quietly.
He squatted beside her, looking, not touching. With steady, alert eyes. With his alert and sleep-refreshed brain behind them.
“Name’s Clade,” he said. “Roy Clade, deppity, from over in Boomerburg. I was due at the courthouse this morning on a car-stealing case, and just happened to take the back road, first time in a year. Never thought I’d run into anything like this.”
“No,” John Bantreagh swallowed. “I reckon nobody would.”
“Yep, she was murdered,” the young deputy said quietly. “No two ways about it. Blood on the back of her head, matted with her hair. She was hit with a tire iron or something, and then laid on the ground when she was out cold, and the front wheels run up onto her. Know who she is?”
“Yes,” John Bantreagh swallowed. “Hername’s—her name was Mollie Bantreagh—Mrs. John Bantreagh—from over outside of Jeffersonville. Funny name, sounds like ‘pantry,’” he said tonelessly—as he always did, to forestall banal remarks about it. “I don’t know where it came from. Some say it’s an aristocratic name in Scotland, but I don’t know. She’s—she was my wife.”
“Your wife!” The young deputy shot up a quick keen look at him. “You mean you were her husband?”
“Yes,” John Bantreagh said. “That’s right.” He could not stop the wobbling of his knees. The dryness stuck in this throat. He rubbed his Adam’s apple with his left hand to relieve the pressure on it.
“Tough!” said the young deputy, in a voice of proper sympathetic pitch. “Your wife! Gee! I thought you were just some stranger driving by. I’m not a married man myself. But your wife—she must have meant an awful lot to you. I’ll bet this has hit you hard.”
“Yes,” said John Bantreagh, feeling his throat. “We had our little disagreements at times, like everybody. I reckon the neighbors know. She always liked nice things a lot.”
“All married people have their little battles, I expect,” said the young deputy awkwardly. “It’d be kind of funny if they didn’t. Gee, your wife, though! Kids, I suppose, too?”
“Three,” said John Bantreagh. “Three. Two boys and a girl.”
“And no one to look after them now, I reckon. Tough!” the young deputy said again, with an effort at feeling. “It sure is an awful break for you, Mr. Bantreagh. Who could have done a thing like this, anyway?”
“I—” said John Bantreagh, swallowing. “I thought maybe I could get Lilybelle to look after them for a spell. She’s not very fond of kids, I don’t think, but she might do it for me.”
“Who’s Lilybelle?”
“Lilybelle Turner, lives next place down the road,” said John Bantreagh. “She’s only a kid herself, just nineteen, and not seeming hardly that old, with her dark curls and blue eyes. All she can think of is having a good time and loving. Mollie—Mollie used to pretend to be kind of jealous of her, just joking. But she’s a woman, anyway, and I reckon I can get her to pitch in and help with the kids, if the neighbors don’t talk.”
“There’s always another woman, isn’t there?” remarked the young deputy. “I mean there’s always one to pitch in and help with the kids, I reckon, unless a man lives at the North Pole, when his wife goes.”
But he hadn’t been paying much attention to the problem, his manner indicated. He had pulled out a silver pencil and a brownish paper-bound notebook from his inner jacket pocket. He opened the notebook on his knee and unscrewed the pencil. John Bantreagh watched with dull, bloodshot eyes what he was writing.
“‘Mollie Bantreagh, Mrs. John Bantreagh, res. nr. Jeff’ville. Struck on back of head by tire iron or other instr’m’nt & run onto by car’s front wheels. Body found by husband—’”
He looked up with sharp alertness at John Bantreagh, with his pencil halted. Bantreagh swayed. He leaned back against his truck with his crank hanging from his hand. It was coming now—the question.
“What time did you find her, Mr. Bantreagh?”
John Bantreagh let his breath seep out. He stiffened his knees. It was bound to come. But this wasn’t it yet.
“I haven’t got a watch,” he said tonelessly. “It was just getting kind of silver light. Maybe ten minutes ago. Maybe half an hour or three quarters—I don’t know. It kind of knocked me out.”
“I’ll put it as four forty-five,” said the young deputy sympathetically. “The exact time, I reckon, doesn’t make any particular difference.
“‘Found by husband at four forty-five,’” he recited as he wrote. “‘Joined by Deputy Clade at five-oh-three and scene observed. No footprints. No tire tread discernible on body; smudge on nylon stockings indication possible print had been wiped off by hand. Possible tire tracks on field obliterated by husband’s car and Deputy Clade’s. Implement with which struck removed by killer. No other objects apparent on scene to indicate identity.’ I guess that’s the story, Mr. Bantreagh.”
He put away his book and pencil. He pushed his hat off the back of his head and set it on levelly again, with his frowning gaze a moment on her staring eyes.
John Bantreagh swallowed. “They’re nylons?” he said.
“What? Her stockings? Oh, sure. All the women’ve got to have them. What did you think they were?”
/>
“I thought they were rayons,” said John Bantreagh. “The pair I got for her last Christmas. I thought they were just rayons all the time. But then tonight I figured they were nylons.”
“Oh, sure,” the young deputy repeated mechanically. “All the women’ve got to have them.”
He pushed his hat on the back of his head again and stood up.
“Who could have done it?” he repeated quietly, with his fists planted on his hips, looking down at John Bantreagh’s pallid face and bloodshot eyes with his keen, alert gaze, with his fresh, keen brain behind it. “Who do you suppose could have done it, Mr. Bantreagh? I mean,” he explained with frowning brow, “she couldn’t have been murdered for her jewels and money, because I don’t reckon she had any—more than just her wedding ring that she’s still got on, and maybe a couple of nickels in her coin purse on her belt or something like that. It couldn’t have been just a maniac, because how could he have got her out to a lonely place like this to murder her, without her putting up some sort of a fight and screaming?
“It was some man she knew, who wanted to get rid of her. Because he was crazy about some beautiful little kid who was a few years younger than she was, maybe; and she knew about it, and was always nagging him, and stood in his way. And so he got her to ride out here with him, and he cracked her on the head with this tire iron or something that he had laid on the seat beside him handy, probably while he was making love to her, and then hauled her out and laid her down in front of his car, and ran his wheels up on her and crushed the life out of her. Figuring to drop her body in the ditch beside the road back near where she lived, like she had been struck by a hit-and-run while walking home.
“Only, after he had done it,” the young deputy said, frowning at John Bantreagh, “he could see it wouldn’t pass. The way her throat had been crushed would be only like she had been lying unconscious on the ground when she had been run over, just the way it had been done. There would be meadow mud and grass stains, maybe, on her dress. And maybe ten or a hundred other things that he couldn’t think of at the moment, but that wouldn’t let it pass. So it was murder,” he said quietly, “and nothing else. And there was nothing for him to do but just leave her here, and go on home and go to sleep, like nothing had happened, waiting till somebody else happened to find her. Figuring that it wouldn’t be for some hours yet, at least. And maybe days, because it was such a lonely road. Though hoping, too, that it wouldn’t be too long.
“And so, as I figure it, Mr. Bantreagh, he got up quietly from where he was kneeling beside her, when he was sure she was dead, and backed away from her to get into his car again, that he had rolled back off her, and back it down across the meadow to the road again. Figuring that if he had left any tire tracks a few hours more might dim them out. Or that maybe somebody else had tires like his, or that maybe when somebody else would come along, they would roll over them with their own tracks before they had noticed them.
“Now, there’s just one thing that I’ve got to ask you, Mr. Bantreagh.”
A faint dawn breath across the dewed meadow stirred a drape of his crisp, freshly pressed black jacket as he stood looking down at John Bantreagh. It stirred the ends of the black knit four-in-hand on his expanse of white shirt above his flat, quiet-breathing diaphragm. The skin on his hard, young, fresh-shaven face was shiny and tight, and a little muscle rippled at the corner of his mouth, though John Bantreagh’s eyes did not lift that high.
His knees—John Bantreagh’s—caved, and he stiffened them. He leaned back against the windshield post of his truck, thrusting his heels against the ground. His bloodshot eyes swam, out of focus. He fingered his throat with his left hand, glancing involuntarily down. There was a deep scratch or cut across the back of his right hand, he saw, that was gripped about the crank handle. He didn’t remember when he had got it, but it was still oozing. Some of the blood must have seeped stickily around onto his clenched palm, helping to glue it to the iron.
Now! he though. What form the question would take, he didn’t know. But it must come. The throat muscles of the big young deputy were still moving beneath his broad, smooth-shaven chin. He had paused only for a moment.
“Just one question, Mr. Bantreagh,” he repeated. “It may seem kind of cold and brutal of me to ask it, at a time like this,” he added, a little awkwardly. “But if I didn’t, someone else would, anyway. And they still will, I reckon, and keep on asking it until they’ve found out whatever there is to know. You understand, a law officer’s got his job to do, and it’s just impersonal. What I mean is, Mr. Bantreagh, was there anybody that she had been going around with that you ever heard about? A boy friend that she had, I mean—someone that she had been two-timing you with? Of course,” he added, “she might have been stepping out and you not have known anything about it. That happens, too. But there must have been someone, just on the face of it, because he would have been the only man in the world who would have any cause to have done it, as sure as hell. Did she ever drop any hint to you about him, Mr. Bantreagh, as to who he was? I don’t mean to seem cold and brutal at a time like this.”
John Bantreagh swallowed. “I know you’ve got to ask your questions,” he said, pulling at the loose skin of his throat. “That’s all right. Yes, I reckon there was”—he swallowed—“someone. She used to go down to the village two or three times a week after supper; it’s only a couple of miles away. She’d tell me she was going to the library to read magazines and books. She was always a great hand for reading. I couldn’t drive her in the truck, because somebody had to stay home with the kids. I’d be asleep by the time she got home. But it seems she didn’t really go to the library at all. This fellow would pick her up on the road, and they’d go riding in his car. I only learned about it last night.”
He swallowed again. He rubbed his forehead with his left hand. There was some small thing he was trying to remember. But there was much more that he wanted to forget.
“I woke up,” he said tonelessly, “with one of the kids crying. He was cold, and wanted a blanket on him. Mollie always looked to their covers when she came home or got up in the night herself. But she hadn’t got home yet. By the looks of the moonlight out on the yard it looked kind of late. I held the alarm clock to the window and saw it was one o’clock. I lit the lamp and put on my pants and shoes and went out to the road in front and looked down it, but didn’t see her coming. There was something white on the front porch of the Turner house a quarter mile down, but that was all.
“So I went back in and covered the kids up better, tucking them in. They sure looked cute in their new pajamas, and I wished she was there to see them. I’d got pajamas for them with my tire order that had come in the morning, blue and white stripes for the boys, and the baby’s pink with the white ducks on them. She hadn’t seen them in them yet; she’d gone out right after supper, before I’d got them to bed. That made me think”—John Bantreagh swallowed—“of the nylons. Her birthday was tomorrow—today. Twenty-nine. And I had ordered her a pair of nylons. I figured she would like them. She had never had any.
“I had left them out in the truck in back, under the seat, to get and give her in the morning. But I thought it might be kind of nice to put them in her bottom drawer for her, where she kept her things, and kind of say something to her in the morning, joking like, that I had heard a mouse in her drawer last night, maybe it was making a nest. And she would hurry to open it and pull out all her things, and would find them at the bottom, and it would surprise her.
“So I brought them in in their envelope,” said John Bantreagh tonelessly, “and opened her drawer and took out some of her things on top, the socks she generally wears and her blouses and skirts that she had made and a couple of starched house dresses. She kept her rayons in the drawer, I knew. But she was wearing them, I thought. I didn’t know she had any other stockings.” He swallowed. “But there were lots of stockings there, hid away at the bottom. A dozen pairs of them. They were the same color as her rayons, but they were smo
oth and slick. They had the feel of the nylons I had bought her now. And there were underthings—pink things, silk and nylon things, things with lace on them. There was even a set of black-lace step-ins and bras. They were what she had been wringing out, or others like them, when I’d been putting on my new tires that forenoon, in a little squeezed-up handful before my eyes. I don’t know what there is about black-lace things. They’re not what a woman gets for herself. They make it seem more awful, somehow.
“I was kind of up wrought.” John Bantreagh swallowed. “There was a pint out in the kitchen cupboard that her sister’s husband had given me last summer when they visited, only I’m not much of a drinking man. But I got it down and took some now. I thought I’d better go and find her. I put on a shirt and coat, and put the matches up on the kitchen shelf where the kids couldn’t reach them, and put out the lamp. I went out to crank the truck. I had just picked up the crank, when I looked around, and thought I saw her on the back porch behind me, in the moonlight and the vines. Only it wasn’t her. It wasn’t anything. It was just the moonlight moving.”
John Bantreagh pulled at his throat. “I cranked the truck then,” he went on, “and got in it, and went down the road towards the village. On the Turner porch steps, just off the road, there was something white sitting. It was Lily belle, sitting in the moonlight in her nightdress with her arms about her knees. ‘Hello, Mr. Bantreagh!’ she called out to me, kind of low. ‘Where are you going at this time of night? What’s happened to Mrs. Bantreagh?’
“I stopped.” John Bantreagh swallowed. “I didn’t want any gossip started. ‘What do you mean, what’s happened to her?’ I said.
“‘I woke up and came out on the steps a little while ago,’ she said. ‘The moonlight was so pretty. And I looked up the road and thought I saw somebody going into your house, like she had just got home.’
